Orchard is fruit of McLachlan's labor

Playwrights Ian McLachlan and Rob Winslow at Fourth Line Theatre near Millbrook.

All winter, Cultural Studies chair Ian McLachlan has been shuttling between his home in Ennismore and the sites of two of his three new plays, Havelock and Millbrook. "I felt like a bad juggler at times," he said. But circumstances and deadlines conspired to force his hand.

A month ago, he completed The Orchard, the centrepiece of Fourth Line Theatre's seventh season this summer, and Hallelujah, I'm a Bum, the only performance salvaged this year from the cancelled Rock 'n' Rail Festival in Havelock. He is also putting the finishing touches on Narrows, a fiction about an investigation into police shootings of two natives in a dispute over fishing rights. He has written all three with others: Trent alumni Rob Winslow, Ursula Pflug and Trent student James Whetung, respectively. "One of the reasons I like writing for theatre ... is that it's always kind of a gregarious process." McLachlan had to put his more solitary pursuit, novel-writing, on hold while he penned the plays.

As the title suggests, The Orchard, takes its thematic cue from Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, in which land speculators' vision of progress collides with some in the community. McLachlan and Winslow, who will direct the play, have interviewed Millbrook residents to create a treatment of the 1960s centred upon a real development scam. Against a broadly sketched social and political canvas - the moon walk, the anti-Vietnam War movement, Canada's centennial - they introduce an expatriate Canadian and her draft dodger lover starting a commune, her eccentric uncle, her ex-husband farmer, her two children and a land speculator. The outdoor stage will be under the trees in front of the Winslow farm house. Alumni Martha Cockshutt and Jim Gleason are designer and production manager.

Hallelujah also evolved from weekly interviews with Havelock denizens for a picture of the rail centre in the 1930s. Written for community actors, it will feature a parade through the village from the train station to the town hall.

With Narrows, McLachlan returns to playwriting that is "angrier and harsher and more in- your-face." Although he has harbored the idea for the play for 10 to 15 years, it wasn't until he met Whetung, who took his theatre course last year, that he found someone who could write the native voice. He hopes to raise funds to stage the production at Trent, in Curve Lake and in Toronto next fall.

Two of McLachlan's students who took a 400-level reading course in Cultural Studies this year are following his suit. They have mounted plays as part of their course work: Cameron Esler produced Irish playwright Brian Friel's The Faith Healer at St. Paul's Church last week and Elyssa Livergant, The Day Room by Don Delillo last November in Toronto.

Stage managing Gone With the Wind
When Peterborough's Vanguard Productions heard that Trent student Adam Guzkowski had directed the March fashion show in Wenjack Theatre that raised $3,185 for a local women's shelter, the company called him up. He has been hired to stage manage the ambitious adaptation of Gone With the Wind, to be performed at Showplace April 22-24.

As if Guzkowski hasn't enough on his plate. The third-year cultural studies student is also cultural affairs representative on the Champlain College cabinet and a member of Trent's Board of Governors. He also recently acted in the Peterborough Theatre Guild's award-winning production of Brian Friel's The Freedom of the City and in the 24-Hour Theatre Project. And just as he completes his final exams, he launches into summer courses. Break a leg!

Girls' science
Nobody seems to know why, but girls' interest in sciences starts to wane in grades 5 and 6. By the time they reach university, few opt for chemistry and physics. And, if they go on to teach, many unconsciously communicate their discomfort about these subjects to their charges.

Following the lead of Teacher Education Program director Deborah Berrill and physics professor Keith de'Bell, who offer a science phobia-buster course for future teachers, fourth-year education student Jodi Hoogendoorn and fellow students have designed a science module for 11- and 12-year-old girls.

Jodi Hoogendoorn with Girls'N'Science manual

For her alternative education practicum to complete her final year here, Hoogendoorn isolated about 20 girls of this age at a local school and had them do experiments in chemistry, physics, botany and environmental sciences. She used everyday objects and examples from daily life to help the girls relate to the science lessons. They saw how light refracts through a prism rather than through a light box. And they watched how baking soda reacts in vinegar. She asked the girls to make qualitative (color, texture, smell) more than quantitative observations (how many, how big) and then to analyze what happened. Hoogendoorn asked: "Can you think of anything in your daily life that is like that?" says Hoogendoorn. "It validates their experience so it brings science down to an everyday level and is not an exclusive activity in a lab."

With the co-operation of local teachers, she and three other Trent students worked with groups of four or five on different units. Hoogendoorn has prepared letters to parents and teachers letting them know about the program. She will have only two weeks with the participants. "It would be foolish to say we can bond with them in two weeks or that they would want to become rocket scientists." Hoogendoorn has to depend on teachers' observations later to determine whether the Girls 'N' Science program has any effect. "It should be possible to see their interest level change over two weeks."

Hoogendoorn hopes the pilot project will be continued by teacher education students every year. It could even be an approach to science that boys might like. In fact, Hoogendoorn hopes the girls will share their science experience with the boys in their classes.

Gzowski interviews fiddler Leahy
Peter Gzowski's interview with Peter Robinson College musician-in-residence Donnell Leahy will be aired April 29 on CBC Newsworld's Gzowski in Conversation at 7 p.m.